Conßict is of course central to Marxian economics. Consistent with Marx and Engels’ (1848, 3) belief that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” most, but not all, of the conßict described involves classes, either “fundamental” or “subsumed” (Resnick and Wolff 1982). Some of it involves individuals, however, on one or both sides, often in different “cl...

The publication in 1923 of Georg Lukács’s foundational History and Class Consciousness is approaching its centenary. Arising from high revolutionary passion, this book faces bleak prospects a hundred years on. After much influence and attention, western Marxism-and broadly speaking, the western Left-likewise has declined since at least 1968. Perry Anderson, the leading philosophical exponent of...

Ignazio Silone, one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, has written strikingly about the role of moral commitment in radical theory. ‘The more Socialist theories claim to be “scientifi c”’, he suggests, ‘the more transitory they are; but Socialist values are permanent. The distinction between theories and values is not suffi ciently recognized, but it is fundamental. On a group of t...

The publication in 1923 of Georg Lukács’s foundational History and Class Consciousness is approaching its centenary. Arising from high revolutionary passion, this book faces bleak prospects a hundred years on. After much influence and attention, western Marxism-and broadly speaking, the western Left-likewise has declined since at least 1968. Perry Anderson, the leading philosophical exponent of...

Political developments in the last ten years have led to a very considerable renewal of interest in Marxist economic and political analysis, and to a concerted attempt to reinvigorate Marxist theory as a revolutionary force. The focus of this movement is the attempt to develop a Marxist critique of Stalinist dogmatism and of post-Stalinist revisionism. Its material conditions are the end of the...

The fundamental principles of modern dialectical philosophy derive from Hegel. He sums them up as follows. `Everything is inherently contradictory ... Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality, it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity' (Hegel 1969, 439). In Hegel's philosophy these ideas form part of an all-embracing id...

Traders Versus the State: Anthropological Approaches to Unofficial Economics is at once both a frustrating book to read and a fascinating book to review. One might suppose from its title that the book deals with conflict between officials on the one hand and those engaged in tradingor merchandising on the other. And one might suppose from reading the subtitle that the book focuses on the activi...